Monday, April 30, 2007

Mummy's girl

Pebbles has discovered books. Well, she knew about books, but this past week she's become rather passionate about them. Just try to walk past her, where she sits in a puddle of cardboard, opening and closing the multicolored, multi-textured tomes, struggling to turn the pages, chattering happily to herself.

"UH!" She says, holding up her favourite, MOO,BAA,LA LA LA. "Read to me!"

And so, of course, we've been doing a lot of Mooing and Baaing, and very little laundry.

What joy! I watch her, and I imagine the places she'll go, the people she'll meet. The things she will see, safe here at home, and the things she'll learn. I hope that books are a respite and a joy to her, as they are to me.

She's just like her mum, I think happily (and secretly) to myself, hugging that little evidence of me - my legacy - close. And then hugging her close, instead, and settling into another round of GOODNIGHT MOON. I love to see myself in my kids, maybe we all do. I'm quick to ascribe traits to this little bundle of change: she's fearless like her Dad, because she climbs everywhere, up the stairs, on the back of the sofa. (Nevermind she hasn't any real experience with the downside of gravity and she doesn't know better.) DH says she's got my temper, and while I can't deny she has one, I tend to think it looks more like his.

What traits have you shared with your children, through nature or nurture?

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